What it Meant
January 25, 2010
The lunar moth
of girlhood
settling, small
violent shuddering,
and the boat’s flirtations
with the blue terrain
clear and fast as
a baby’s eye,
the sleep of this waterlogged
girl in a surrounded chair,
unaware she is about to
let her favorite book
slip tiredly into the sea.
All is going orange.
Her smooth legs and arms
are alight.
Above and behind her,
uneasy packs of sea flies
hover and dissolve
in winds carried in
on the breakers.
For such an evening,
for the fanning palms of
the young who wouldn’t give…
but just that longing
is perhaps the seaside’s meaning,
it’s the blue polish on
the churned stones,
the dank sweet scent of
seaweed’s death. Quiet.
Watch what the streetlight on
the cliff throbs downward to reveal:
her squeak and barely woken running,
her effortless flitting away
towards her bed with its white
window to the sailing moon.
1.10
